Mint, oregano, chive and parsley are a few herbs chefs use to stimulate taste buds at mealtime. These herbs, commonly found in backyard gardens and windowsill pots, do more than enhance our meals – their flowers attract beneficial pollinators.
What’s important about attracting pollinators? Carol Tyrrell, state liaison of Four Corners Beekeepers, said “one out of every three bites of food you eat is there because of pollinators. Without the actions of pollinators, our food supply, agricultural economies and surrounding landscapes would collapse.”
Tyrrell will share information about pollinators and how to attract them at a free presentation, Planting to Support Bees and Other Pollinators, at the Animas Valley Grange.
She said pollinators, which includes more than 20,000 species of wild bees, wasps, butterflies, moths, birds and bats, are essential to the growth of fruits, vegetables, herbs and nuts. One-third of all human food crops worldwide, Tyrrell said, are dependent on pollinators.
Locally, pollinators play a crucial role in the productivity of our backyard gardens, local farms and orchards, in bringing food to our tables.
Tyrrell said without local pollinators, finding the ingredients to make a fresh salad of garden-grown tomatoes and cucumbers spiced with oregano leaves would be impossible.
Bumblebees are the most usual suspects for pollinating tomato plants. The bumblebee is also a “generalist,” Tyrrell said, feeding on the nectar of a wide variety of plants in the early spring through late fall in our region.
The honeybee is the most effective cucurbit pollinator, she said. Cucurbits are members of the gourd family that includes cucumber, squash, melon and pumpkin.
When it comes to pollinators, honeybees rule. “The honeybee is the most common and effective pollinator, designed to collect pollen using hairs on every part of their bodies – even their eyeballs,” Tyrrell said.
When an insect enters a flower to drink the plant’s nectar, it inadvertently collects pollen, then distributes the pollen to another flower where it hopefully germinates to produce the plant’s fruiting body and thus food.
When people plant their vegetable gardens, they should take pollinators into consideration. If they don’t, Tyrrell says, they may lose foods such as apples, plums, peaches, pears, cherries, currants and strawberries.